blog.arithm

Well, what was supposed to be a quick weekend project back in March is finally on it’s way to the iPhone App Store; and for the second time no less.

“Kanji Fuda” is a simple Japanese kanji learning game reminiscent of ComCul’s excellent Kanji for Fun. Between work and baby management, I’ve been cobbling it together in fits and starts over the last couple of months. Even have the fancy shmancy website that seems to be prerequisite for releasing any kind of mobile app.

Now that the basic version is done and “released” — assuming that I am able to get it by the App Store gate keepers — I’m working on an advanced version specifically to help study for the year-end Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). I’ve always wanted to go after Level One, but given how little I actually use my Japanese these days, it’s going to be a stretch… hence Kanji Fuda.

And I thought my blood pressure was bad.

Have been watching 日本語で遊ぼ (literally, “Playing in Japanese”) with Layla every day.  It’s an awesome show that highlights elements of traditional culture and language in a format that’s fun for kids and interesting to parents (or, at least, interesting to one gaijin dad).

The Japanese introduced is often lesser used, if not bordering on archaic.   Today we learned “成らぬ堪忍するが堪忍”, which in English would — I think — roughly translate to “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t… so just put up with the status quo.”

I can’t tell you how many times I could have used this phrase while living in Japan.  Like, say, when the wealthy yet crazy neighbor would come over and shower me with junk (old pots, broken plates, flat bicycle tires, etc.) because she thought I might find it useful.

I couldn’t refuse the junk.. that would upset her and cause trouble in the neighborhood.  But I also couldn’t throw it away again; she would notice, get upset, and that would… cause trouble in the neighborhood.

So I hid two years worth of slowly accumulating junk under the house I was renting.

成らぬ堪忍するが堪忍・・・

If you ever find yourself stuck relying on the IME built-into Emacs (rather than the IME native to your OS), here are the essential key strokes you’ll need to know.

• C-\:  toggle input mode (ime on or off)
• C-h:  shows conversion options if used when in conversion mode
• SPC: transform input to kanji, or show the next conversion candidate
• DEL:  abort conversion
• C-n: show the next conversion candidate
• C-p: show the previous conversion candidate
• C-o: lengthen conversion bunsetsu
• C-i, TAB: shorten conversion bunsetsu
• Shift-k:  toggle between hiragana and katakana
• qq:  toggle between alphabet and kanji modes
• qz:  turn on zenkaku alphabet mode
• qh:  turn off zenkaku alphabet mode

Also useful:

• C-x RET l:  set the buffer language environment
• C-x RET f: select the encoding
• C-x RET C-\:  select the input method

Easier to configure than I thought it would be. The defacto document on this lists a series of convoluted steps to get UTF-8 working.  All you really need to do is as follows:

1. Launch the local configurator via # dpkg-reconfigure locales
2. Select the locales you would like to support. I need Japanese support so I selected ja_JP.EUC, ja_JP.UTF-8, and en_US.UTF-8 in addition to already available locales. Click “Ok”.
3. Choose the default locale from the list; make sure it is a UTF-8 locale. Click “Ok”.
4. Login to another shell.

That’s it!

# locale charmap should now return “UTF-8″.

This is one of the better phrases we’ve discussed lately. ALC translates it as follows:

世渡り上手（yo watari jyouzu） — worldly wisdom

which is not.. really right. 世渡り上手 literally means “good at crossing the world”.

Think of someone you know for whom, without really having to try, everything goes well; especially career-wise. They float from job to job and their career always seems to grow brighter. The golden boy in the office. The entreprenuer who stumbles from one boom to another as others go bust. These people are 世渡り上手.

In a positive sense this phrase refers to those who live a “charmed life”. The innocently lucky. 世渡り上手 can also refer to those who worm their way up the ladder of life. Sycophants and “yes men”.

It all depends, I suppose, on whom you are referring and the particular secrets of their success. And maybe upon your point of view.

My wife and I have been playing a word-of-the-day game on and off for a year or so. Though the pace is slow, it’s probably been one of the most effective ways of picking and retaining new vocabulary I’ve used; especially now that we’ve moved back to the US.

Yesterday’s word came up while watching Karei Naru Ichizoku, a Kimutaku drama about Japanese business and power in post-WWII Japan.

徹底的（tetteiteiki） — exhaustive

Lots of tetteiteki this and that in Karei Naru Ichizoku. Business, politics, power. Lawyers. Lawyers and exhaustive research into the nether regions of business. 　徹底的な研究 of some such product, 徹底的な検査 to prepare for the upcoming trial.. yada, yada. As for me, the drama kind of induced me to 徹底的に寝る。

(But then I woke up exhausted… Nyuck nyuck nyuck.)

Build mod_security against the wrong set of headers, and Apache 2 will mysteriously begin to segfault in a persistent manner. Check which version you’re running with dpkg --get-selections | grep apache2.

Seems my shiny new Debian distro running the prefork version of Apache had the threaded (worker) headers installed against it. Duh. apt-get install apache2-prefork-dev reinstalled the correct prefork headers and Apache is happy again.

Mathiew Dessus has a great article about installing mod_securty on Debian for those interested.

Sheesh. For the last, say, eight years I’ve wondered why Japanese keyboards required one to punch both Shift and Caps Lock to turn caps lock on. And now that I’m on mostly English OS’s these days, I think I know: Caps Lock is (was?) an alternative to the henkan key. Probably before there were Japanese keyboards, there was Caps Lock Henkan. And I guess Alt-` emerged for people who had become accustomed to the having a real henkan key.

Anyway, for anyone else out there suffering through Japanese emails on English windows, here are some useful key combinations:

Alt-Shift: Toggle Input Language
Caps Lock: Henkan (while in Japanese input mode)


And beware of installing both English and Japanese keyboards under the installed default keyboard settings. The keyboard layout will change randomly and drive you bonkers.

This weekend there will be a free English Rakugo event at two location in Boston. Come experience traditional Japanese “sit down” comedy!

See English Rakugo Boston 2007 for details.